By Jesseca P. Timmons, a case writer in Entrepreneurial Studies and Social Entrepreneurship for The Lewis Institute at Babson College. Case studies are a little bit mysterious: where do they come from? Who writes them? How do we pick what companies to write about? The answer is, it’s a little bit different every time—but Babson…

By Jesseca P. Timmons, a case writer in Entrepreneurial Studies and Social Entrepreneurship for The Lewis Institute at Babson College. Last month, I described how Sy Friedland invited the Hay Group to create a position profile of his role at JFCS in preparation for his departure after 18 years. With a strong candidate in mind…

By Jesseca P. Timmons, a case writer in Entrepreneurial Studies and Social Entrepreneurship for The Lewis Institute at Babson College. We never know exactly what we’re getting into when we start a new case study. When Les Charm, Ed Marram and I started writing about Sy Friedland and Boston’s Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS),…

By Jesseca P. Timmons, a case writer in Entrepreneurial Studies and Social Entrepreneurship for The Lewis Institute at Babson College. Every entrepreneur tells a powerful story. In case interviews, they often describe concepts and changes they put in place which ended up completely transforming their business, or even their industry. When we interviewed Sy Friedland,…

By Jesseca P. Timmons, a case writer in Entrepreneurial Studies and Social Entrepreneurship for The Lewis Institute at Babson College. After spending six months writing our case on Year Up, I really wanted to be there when Gerald Chertavian attended Ed Marram’s Managing a Growing Business class as a guest speaker. Ed and I were…

By Jesseca P. Timmons, a case writer in Entrepreneurial Studies and Social Entrepreneurship for The Lewis Institute at Babson College. In the fascinating six-month process of writing a case on Year Up, we learned Year Up is very different from most other organizations which focus on inner city youth. Unlike Teach for America or City…

By Jesseca P. Timmons, a case writer in Entrepreneurial Studies and Social Entrepreneurship for the Lewis Institute at Babson College. Meeting social entrepreneur Gerald Chertavian, founder of Year Up, opened my eyes to an issue I had been only vaguely aware of: the nationwide “skills gap,” which he also describes as the “opportunity gap.” Gerald,…

By Jesseca P. Timmons, a case writer in Entrepreneurial Studies and Social Entrepreneurship for the Lewis Institute at Babson College. Meeting amazing entrepreneurs—whether they are born social entrepreneurs such as Adam Braun, innovative “intra-preneurs” like Sy Friedland (who I will write about soon) or grassroots founders with truly astounding instincts and drive, like Jon Feinman—is…

By Jesseca P. Timmons, a case writer in Entrepreneurial Studies and Social Entrepreneurship for the Lewis Institute at Babson College. The end of a teaching case is never really the end. Part of what makes the case method fascinating is finding out what an entrepreneur did next—or where they are today. When Mary Gale and…

By Jesseca P. Timmons, a case writer in Entrepreneurial Studies and Social Entrepreneurship for the Lewis Institute at Babson College. Every time we interview an entrepreneur for a case study, I am amazed how much information we can get in an hour—we can end up with a fifteen-page transcript from just one interview. Follow-up interviews…